My very own 50 shades of grey

Two years ago, I wrote this post. I spoke about the three strands of grey hair I had then. Let’s cut to the present. I now have a head that has an infinite number of grey strands. Infinite additions in just a little over 700 days. How much grey must I have sprouted per day then! Sometimes I wonder, how did that happen?

They say stress accelerates greying. Well, there is no denying that in the past year and a half, my body has been subjected to an alarming level of stress. I have undergone a lot. What with Oregano’s kidney failure, recurring problems and subsequent transplant, daddy’s health faltering, his hospitalisation, the waiting game outside the ICU that used to make my heart pound hard against my chest, facing the big question of whether or not he would make it, the sighting of a doctor accompanied by a delirious heart beat as we waited to hear their verdict on his condition, the trauma of his passing away, my papa’s sudden ill health, his hospitalisation, the sudden, enormous responsibility of running a company, I think I was sucked into a whirlpool of stress.

Thankfully, my life is back on track. I am in a happy space. My dad has recovered and we are all well. Having said that, I don’t know if I can overlook all that I have been through. Sometimes, I believe that phase caused some irreversible changes in me. Not just emotionally, but physically too. I have become prone to sudden bouts of palpitations and irregular heart beats.

Work also ends up tiring me out completely. I do try to not let the tension build up in my system, but I have often wished I could take a sabbatical from work, get a few months off to unwind, incorporate meditation and regular exercise into my life and bring in a sense of calmness. Unfortunately, with the current state of affairs at work, I don’t see that happening anytime soon.

Anyway, going by my lifestyle and my history, I shouldn’t be surprised by the amount of grey that has appeared. Other than the stress, I also suffer from various vitamin and mineral deficiencies. I began to to take my supplements seriously, only to lose steam in a month and after missing a few consecutive doses, all my determination went kaput. Note to self – Restart supplements.

Coming back to the grey, I feel awfully disturbed each time people react to it. I have had friends who see my hair and go, ‘Oh my God! You have so much grey hair!’. The shock and exclamation in their tone makes me supremely conscious and I almost think of ways to cover or hide my hair from their view. I need to learn to deal with this better. Because, clearly, people will not change the way they react to it.

It really sucks that my mother-in-law does not have a single strand of grey at 58, whereas I, despite being under 30 have a million. People tend to compare and I feel like smacking them and telling them I didn’t get my genes from my in-laws. I got them from my parents. My mother has been suffering from premature greying from the time she was a teen. I need to be thankful I didn’t have to undergo it from such an early age.

I’m not entirely sure where I am going with this post. I just wanted to write about how disturbed I feel with the emergence of all this grey and the reactions it garners. On one hand I am struggling to accept my adult hood, on the other hand, my body is showing signs that translate to old age. It is just too much to cope. I am struggling already, please don’t make it worse with your reactions.

On some days I wonder what world I am caught in. I keep seeing flashes of my happy and carefree childhood. I see myself riding my bicycle in our apartment premises, my friends calling out to me from the ground floor, asking me to come down to play, the shuttle cock landing in some aunty’s balcony. I take several such trips. My brain freezes these memories so that I can savour them just a little more…

And then I have to snap out of that world and return to this world, full of responsibilities, exhaustion and grey hair.

A friend sent this image and I thought there couldn’t be a more apt description of how I feel.